Effortful Control and Media Use from Birth to Age 5: A Meta-Analysis

Effortful control—the ability to regulate attention, emotion, and behavior—is essential for adaptive functioning. It develops rapidly during the first five years of life, a period when media exposure is evolving. However, inconsistent findings across studies have left this relation unclear. This meta-analysis examined the relation between effortful control and media use during early childhood (birth to age 5). Data were synthesized from 26 studies, comprising 246 effect sizes and 19,971 children across 20 countries, five of which were represented by multiple studies (United States, Canada, China, Finland, and Türkiye). We investigated the overall association between effortful control and media use and the role of potential moderators. Results showed that the overall association was significant, indicating that children with higher effortful control engaged in lower levels of media use, and this relation became stronger with age. Media interactivity moderated the association, such that noninteractive and uncategorized media use were more negatively associated with effortful control than interactive media, controlling for age, media quantity, measurement types, and study design. These findings identify effortful control as a temperament-based individual difference associated with early media use and underscore the importance of developmental timing and media interactivity in moderating this relation.